The modern yo-yo toy is a fairly sophisticated device that has passed through various stages of technical refinement over the years. A typical yo-yo includes two identical body section halves interconnected by an axle at the center. A string tether is looped about the axle, and by manipulating the string in a well known fashion, the yo-yo may be able to spin and be drawn up and down. The at-home do-it-yourself craft industry is a growing part of our economy, and handcrafted items such as toys are a large segment of that industry. One of the craft industry's popular tools for creating home projects is the wood lathe that can be used to turn out different woodcraft products. The yo-yo is one of the toys that is desired by crafts people to produce on a wood lathe because yo-yos are of simple circular construction.
A problems exists, however, in the more sophisticated yo-yo designs which employ ball bearings to increase yo-yo performance. These are difficult to adapt to the at-home craft industry which must utilize relatively simple materials such as wood to form the body of the yo-yo. By its nature the ball bearing is a separate structure which must be installed over an axle. Accurately locating and centering the ball bearing and complementing it with the necessary friction producing side surfaces is difficult to achieve with accuracy even in large-scale manufacturing. For an at-home craft project this difficulty is increased, and it is an extremely difficult task for the craft person to produce his own high performance ball-bearing type yo-yo. There has therefore been demonstrated a need in the art for a "kit" that may be successfully employed with the limited skills and materials of a home-craft person.
Pertinent prior art of which the applicant is aware which employs the use of sophisticated ball-bearing yo-yos is U. S. Pat. No. 5,813,898. Other prior art which shows the use of a yo-yo which may be constructed from an assembly of parts includes, for example, U. S. Pat. No. 4,207,701 which shows the use of yo-yo body halves which may be disassembled and inverted to provide a different appearance. In both cases, however, the components of the yo-yo require critical dimensioning of parts or finely tapered surfaces which are difficult to achieve by the typical home-craft woodworker who is restricted to the most simple operations such as rudimentary wood turning, drilling and gluing. A home-craft yo-yo kit is heretofore unknown that is capable of producing an acceptable technologically sophisticated ball-bearing type yo-yo.